Graveyard Shovel
Artifact
, 
: Target player exiles a card from their graveyard. If it's a creature card, you gain 2 life.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Innistrad
- Price
- $0.09
- EDHREC rank
- #27395
Graveyard Shovel is a cheap, repeatable graveyard exile effect that also gains you life — two things most Commander tables want for two mana. It's not the fastest or most impactful hate piece available, but at its cost it earns its slot in any deck that wants incidental graveyard disruption without dedicating a card slot to a pure hoser.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Graveyard Shovel fills the role of low-investment, repeatable graveyard hate — the kind of effect that doesn't feel like a dead draw when no one at the table is running a graveyard deck, because the life gain keeps it marginally useful. Legacy and Vintage have faster, more surgical options like Surgical Extraction or Relic of Progenitus that outclass it in those high-stakes environments, so Graveyard Shovel rarely sees play there. It's legal in Modern and Oathbreaker as well, but the same logic applies: dedicated hate pieces at the same mana cost do more for less. Commander is the format where its incremental, artifact-based nature matters most — it plays nicely with artifact synergies and doesn't require a colored mana investment.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.09 bulk tier
At $0.09, Graveyard Shovel is deep bulk — you're paying less for it than most sleeves cost per card. It won't hold or gain value, but you're not buying it for that; you're buying it because it fills a utility slot for essentially nothing.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.